The
History of GlasgowVolume 2 - Chapter XXXIII -
Rebellion and Revolution

THE Netherlands were, in the latter part
of the seventeenth century, the chief rival of this country in
colonizing enterprise and naval power. Since the days of Charles I.
they had afforded an asylum to discontented and disinherited persons
from England and Scotland alike. [Coltness Collections. Chambers's
Domestic Annals, ii. 540.] Charles II. himself had found a retreat
there while he waited an opportunity to recover the double crown
from the Government of Oliver Cromwell. The Netherlands also were
the arsenal from which the weapons were obtained which were used
against the Government troops at the battles of Rullion Green,
Drumclog, Bothwell Bridge, and Ayr's Moss. Accordingly, the arms and
men were both ready there when the accession of Charles II.'s
brother, the Duke of York and Albany, as King James VII. and II.,
seemed to offer a favourable opportunity for another attempt. The
new king was a Roman Catholic, and for that reason unpopular, and
the discontented elements at Amsterdam and the Hague resolved to
seize the chance to effect a revolution without delay. Within three
months of the beginning of the new reign two strong and fully
equipped expeditions sailed from the Dutch ports.

The Earl of Argyll, as we have seen, had
pleaded lack of means as a reason for refusing to repay the money
borrowed by his father from Hutchesons' Hospital and the Town
Council of Glasgow. But lack of means did not prevent him from
fitting out a formidable expedition, with ships and men and ample
munitions of war, for a more definite attempt than had yet been made
to overthrow the Government of Scotland. And thus, while the Duke of
Buccleuch and Monmouth, son of Charles II. and Lucy Walters, with
certain pretensions to legitimacy and a claim to the throne, landed
with a force in the south-west of England, Argyll, at the head of an
equally threatening array, disembarked in leis own country, near the
disaffected southwestern district of Scotland. The story of that
ill-starred campaign is told with fullness and, for him, unusual
fairness by Lord Macaulay in his history of that time.

Had the Earl been a leader of
military ability, like the two Leslies or Montrose, he might easily
have raised an army of formidable size and determined character from
among the Covenanters of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, and Galloway, and
might have opened another campaign like that of forty years earlier
which resulted in the overthrow and execution of Charles I. The very
real apprehensions of the Government as to such a possibility are
shown by the fact that, at the news of Argyll's rebellion, some two
hundred Covenanter prisoners then in Edinburgh were sent to safer
keeping in the strong northern fortress of Dunnottar. [Wodrow, iii.
322.]

But Argyll was no general. Leaving
his munitions, with a small garrison, on one of the islands at the
mouth of Loch Ridden in the Kyles of Bute, he proceeded, with a
force of some eighteen hundred men, to cross Loch Long and march
upon Glasgow. After fording the Water of Leven at Balloch, however,
the rebels came in sight of a strong body of Government troops
posted in the village of Kilmaronock. Argyll was for giving instant
battle, but the expedition was really under the control of a
committee of which Sir Patrick Hume of Marchmont was the leading
spirit, and on his advice it was determined to delay till night, and
then, crossing the Kilpatrick Hills, give the redcoats the slip, and
endeavour to reach the objective at Glasgow, where, it was expected,
strong reinforcements would join the rising. But the night was dark,
the guides mistook the track, and among the bogs and in the darkness
many of the Highlanders took the opportunity of going home. In the
morning at Kilpatrick the Earl found his force reduced to five
hundred men. Perceiving further attempt to be hopeless, he disbanded
his company, and, crossing the Clyde, changed clothes with a
peasant. He had made his way as far as Inchinnan, when his
appearance excited suspicion, and he was seized by some rustics. He
is said to have betrayed himself by the exclamation "Unhappy
Argyll!" and as a result found himself under strong guard that night
in the tolbooth of Glasgow. Thence, almost immediately, he was
conveyed to Edinburgh, where, on the warrant of a bygone sentence,
he was executed on 30th June.

How Argyll expected to find support
or reinforcements in Glasgow is difficult to understand. It is true
that while he, with three other officers and "ane poor Dutchman,"
"being all wounded," lay in the tolbooth, the magistrates expended
the sum of £55 2s. Scots on dressing their wounds and furnishing
them with drugs. [Burgh Records, 10th Aug. 1685.] But that was no
more than a matter of common humanity. On the accession of King
James the magistrates had sent the new monarch a most loyal address.
[Ibid. 13th March.] At the news of Argyll's sailing past the
Orkneys, three regiments of Lothian and Angus militia had been
quartered in the town, and the city fathers had themselves equipped
a body of eleven militiamen who were on service for forty-four days.
[Ibid. 10th Aug.]

Argyll's invasion was the last armed
attempt of any size made against the Government by the Covenanters
in the West of Scotland. Lord Macaulay has justly said of it, what
might be said of the earlier efforts of the Covenanters at Dunbar
and Bothwell Bridge, "What army commanded by a debating club ever
escaped discomfiture and disgrace?" Nevertheless the alarm which it
caused was not the less profound. The Privy Council protested
against the withdrawal of troops to meet Monmouth's invasion in the
south, declaring that not many of the rebels had been captured, and
that there remained "a vast number of fanaticks ready for all
mischief upon the first occasion." [Reg. Priv. Coun., 3rd Series,
vol. xi.]

At the end of July, a month after
Argyll's rebellion had been suppressed, the prisoners, eight score
and seven in number, who at the outbreak of hostilities had been
sent for safe keeping to Dunnottar, were brought south again, and
tried by the Lord President of the Court of Session and four earls
at Leith. Among those who took the oath of allegiance and were set
free were two Glasgow men, John Marshall and David Fergusson; but
the greater number, remaining refractory, were sent to the
plantations. [Woodrow, iii. 326.]

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